Editorial: Report cards for California schools needed

The U.S. flag hangs in a classroom at Argonne Elementary School in S.F.

The U.S. flag hangs in a classroom at Argonne Elementary School in...

The California Legislature is strongly resisting federal action on almost all fronts — climate, civil rights, environment, immigration, law enforcement — but not education. There is demonstrated support for an annual report card on how each school spends local, state and federal funding and what progress it has made on measures of student academic achievement. The Brown administration however is resisting such concise reporting. It should not.

By Sept. 18, California must submit to U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos its plan for spending $2.6 billion in federal education funding. While that sum represents just 3 percent of total funding for California’s K-12 schools, the required state-developed accountability plan would serve as a blueprint for a broader plan for all education spending in California.

In the draft report to DeVos however, the state has offered the bare minimum of information required. Last month, a national education policy organization, Bellwether Education Partners, criticized the state, finding its report vague or lacking information. An alliance of school reformers and student advocacy groups, including Education Trust-West and Children Now, agrees. Specifically, the alliance wants a state requirement that each school district report how it will use local, state and federal funding to spot poor-performing schools and raise achievement for the lowest 5 percent of schools and the lowest-performing students in all schools.

The Brown administration has brushed off the criticism, saying that rating an application for funds is far different from evaluating how well a state is delivering public education.

Voters hold the Legislature accountable for education spending, which represents the largest category of state expenditures. Under state law, the Local Control Funding Formula, districts and parents, not legislators, decide where the dollars go. Without an easily deciphered rating system, it’s nearly impossible for parents to hold local school boards accountable or to know if spending decisions made by parents and the school board are moving their school toward improvement. It’s even harder to know if extra resources are going to students who arrived already academically behind their classmates in kindergarten and need to catch up.

What the state is doing is posting a dashboard, with five color-coded performance levels on six indicators, including high school graduation and suspension rates, to track each district’s performance. Critics say the dashboard is difficult to understand and doesn’t help monitor progress toward closing the academic achievement gap.

Legislators signaled their interest in a more easily deciphered report card with their support for Assembly Bill 1321, which cleared the Assembly with 77 yes and just 3 no votes, and had no opposition. Assembly member Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, who has fought for educational equity for years, said her bill would have aligned state law with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, which in 2015 replaced the Bush-era No Child Left Behind law.

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AB1321, however, went further by requiring a detailed report card from each school — and thus collided with the philosophy championed by Gov. Jerry Brown and state Board of Education President Michael Kirst. On Friday, the bill died in the Senate Appropriations Committee. It was unlikely the governor would have signed it, had it made it to his desk.

The governor and the state school board obviously aren’t in favor of underperforming public schools. What they want is local school boards and parents, not the federal government, to figure out how to spend their funds to lift achievement. That’s the principle of subsidiarity promoted by Brown and embodied in state education law.

In the balance of this political struggle lies the future of 6 million K-12 students in California public schools, more than half of whom come from low-income families.

Without transparency to know where the funds are going or if the spending is lifting achievement, “local control” is an empty slogan. Californians deserve a report card on how schools are doing.

This commentary is from The Chronicle’s editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters.